Conversion of classification systems into ontologies: feasibility analysis

• Grant number: 15/17299-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2015
• End date: October 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Information Science - Library and Information Science
• Principal Investigator: Walter Moreira
• Grantee: André Felipe Pereira da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Bibliographic classification systems are among the most successful knowledge organization systems. Although they have emerged in the late the late nineteenth century and are still widely used, they have been questioned, especially in the post-War, about his ability to cope with the processing of information growing exponentially. In this context, the thesaurus has emerged as more flexible and richer instruments and in terms of the typology of conceptual relations that housed. In the late twentieth century, the increase in the amount of information in digital resources provokes new questions. In this scenario, new proposals, such as ontologies, obliged to question the effectiveness of classification systems in the digital landscape and provokes questions about the similarity relations, opposition and identity between these two knowledge organization systems. Thus, it is proposed as a general goal for this research project to verify the theoretical and practical feasibility of the conversion of bibliographic classification systems into ontologies. The specific objectives are: a) to understand the types of conceptual relationships found in DDC; b) to understand the description models of relationships made possible by language Web Ontology Language (OWL) and c) to formalize the conceptual relationships identified in DDC into an OWL language, and check the mutual matching of resources. For that will be adopted, in summary, the following methodological procedures: a) identification and mapping of the present typology of conceptual relations in DDC; b) creation of ontology to formalize in OWL language, through the Protégé, the conceptual relationships identified in DDC. The data will be compared in terms of the consistency of conceptual relationships of DDC and the generated ontology taking as base the typology and definitions of conceptual relationships presented in ISO 25964 standard. (AU)